Antidepressant use During Pregnancy and the Risk of Major Congenital Malformations in a Cohort of Depressed Pregnant Women: A Re-analysis of the Quebec Pregnancy Cohort
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Objective To quantify the association between first-trimester antidepressant exposure and the risk of major congenital malformations (MCM) in a cohort of depressed women. Method Data were obtained from the Quebec pregnancy cohort. All pregnancies with a diagnosis of depression or anxiety, or exposed to antidepressants in the 12 months before pregnancy, and ending with a live-born singleton were included. Antidepressant classes (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI), serotonin norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRI), tricyclic antidepressants (TCA), and other antidepressants), and types were individually compared to non-exposure during the first-trimester (depressed untreated). MCM overall and organ-specific malformations in the first year of life were identified. Result Eighteen thousand four hundred and eighty-seven depressed pregnant women were included. Citalopram use during the first-trimester was increasing the risk of MCM (aOR 1.36, 95%CI 1.08, 1.73; 88 exposed cases). Antidepressants with serotonin reuptake inhibition effect (SSRI, SNRI, amitriptyline (the most used TCA)) were increasing the risk of certain organ specific defects: paroxetine was increasing the risk of cardiac defects (aOR 1.45, 95%CI 1.12, 1.88), and ventricular/atrial septal defects (aOR 1.39, 95%CI 1.00. 1.93); citalopram was increasing the risk of musculoskeletal defects (aOR 1.92, 95%CI 1.40. 2.62), and cranyosynostosis (aOR 3.95, 95%CI 2.08, 7.52); TCA was associated with eye, ear, face and neck defects (aOR 2.45, 95%CI 1.05, 5.72), and digestive defects (aOR 2.55, 95%CI 1.40. 4.66); and venlafaxine was associated with respiratory defects (aOR 2.17, 95%CI 1.07, 4.38). Conclusion Antidepressants with effects on serotonin reuptake during embryogenesis are increasing the risk of some organ specific malformations in a cohort of pregnant women with depression. Disclosure of interest COI: Disclosures and acknowledgments: AB is a consultant for plaintiffs in litigations involving antidepressants and birth defects. All other authors report no financial relationships with commercial interests. All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".